The mandate of the International Commission on Biological Effects of Noise (ICBEN) is to promote a high level of scientific research concerning all aspects of noise-induced effects on human beings and animals. In this review, ICBEN team chairs and co-chairs summarize relevant findings, publications, developments, and policies related to the biological effects of noise, with a focus on the period 2011-2014 and for the following topics: Noise-induced hearing loss; nonauditory effects of noise; effects of noise on performance and behavior; effects of noise on sleep; community response to noise; and interactions with other agents and contextual factors. Occupational settings and transport have been identified as the most prominent sources of noise that affect health. These reviews demonstrate that noise is a prevalent and often underestimated threat for both auditory and nonauditory health and that strategies for the prevention of noise and its associated negative health consequences are needed to promote public health.

The effect of noise exposure on human performance and behavior continues to be a focus for research activities. This paper reviews developments in the field over the past 3 years, highlighting current areas of research, recent findings, and ongoing research in two main research areas: Field studies of noise effects on children's cognition and experimental studies of auditory distraction. Overall, the evidence for the effects of external environmental noise on children's cognition has strengthened in recent years, with the use of larger community samples and better noise characterization. Studies have begun to establish exposure-effect thresholds for noise effects on cognition. However, the evidence remains predominantly cross-sectional and future research needs to examine whether sound insulation might lessen the effects of external noise on children's learning. Research has also begun to explore the link between internal classroom acoustics and children's learning, aiming to further inform the design of the internal acoustic environment. Experimental studies of the effects of noise on cognitive performance are also reviewed, including functional differences in varieties of auditory distraction, semantic auditory distraction, individual differences in susceptibility to auditory distraction, and the role of cognitive control on the effects of noise on understanding and memory of target speech materials. In general, the results indicate that there are at least two functionally different types of auditory distraction: One due to the interruption of processes (as a result of attention being captured by the sound), another due to interference between processes. The magnitude of the former type is related to individual differences in cognitive control capacities (e.g., working memory capacity); the magnitude of the latter is not. Few studies address noise effects on behavioral outcomes, emphasizing the need for researchers to explore noise effects on behavior in more detail.

It is often uncritically assumed that, when digital technologies are integrated into the operation of city functions, they inevitably contribute to sustainable urban development. Such a notion rests largely on the belief that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) solutions pave the way for more democratic forms of planning, and that ‘smart’ technological devices result in a range of environmental benefits, e.g., energy efficiency and the mitigation of global warming. Drawing on the scientific literature that deals with ‘smart cities’, we here elaborate on how both propositions fail to consider drawbacks that could be characterized as ‘wicked’, i.e., problems that lack simplistic solutions and straightforward planning responses, and which often come about as ‘management surprises’, as a byproduct of achieving sustainability. We here deal with problems related to public choice constraints, ‘non-choice default technologies’ and the costs of automation for human learning and resilience. To avoid undemocratic forms of planning and too strong a dependence on non-choice default technologies, e.g., smart phones, we recommend that planners and policy makers safeguard redundancy in public-choice options by maintaining a wide range of alternative choices, including analog ones. Resilience thinking could help planners deal more effectively with the ‘wickedness’ of an increasingly hyper-connected society.

This paper focuses on the need for a widened definition of the notion of technology within the smart city discourse, with a particular focus on the “built environment”. The first part of the paper describes how current tendencies in urban design and architecture are inclined to prioritize high tech-solutions at the expense of low-tech functionalities and omits that information and communication technology (ICT) contrasts the art of building cities as an adaptable and habitually smart technology in itself. It continues with an elaboration on the need for expanding the limits of system boundaries for a better understanding of the energy and material telecouplings that are linked to ICT solutions and account for some perils inherent in smart technologies, such as rebound effects and the difficulty of measuring the environmental impacts of ICT solutions on a city level. The second part of the paper highlights how low-tech technologies and nature-based solutions can make cities smarter, representing a new technology portfolio in national and international policies for safeguarding biodiversity and the delivery of a range of ecosystem services, promoting the necessary climate-change adaption that cities need to prioritize to confer resilience.

Cognitive training might have potential to improve speech understanding under adverse listening conditions. Here, we have examined the effects of a 5-week computer-based cognitive training program on speech-in-noise-performance, in normal hearing (NH) participants and in participants with mild-to-moderate sensorineural hearing loss (HI).

Two groups, matched on gender and age (45-65 years), of 20 participants each (HI and NH respectively) are recruited. Participants perform four test-sessions; inclusion (t0), five weeks (t1), ten weeks (t2) and six months (t3). Training is performed either between t0 and t1, or between t1 and t2 (using a cross-over design), using the computer-based Cogmed training program, approximately 30-40 minutes per day, five days per week, during five weeks. At each session participants are tested in three different ways: (a) cognitive testing (KIPS, SICSPAN, TRT); (b) auditory performance (pure tone-audiometry (air- and bone-conduction) and speech audiometry (HINT, Swedish SPIN-test (SNR +4dB))); (c) cortical activation (MR sessions where participants performed a speech-in-noise task using Hagerman-sentences with steady-state speech-spectrum noise (SSN) and with two competing talkers). MR imaging is performed on a Philips Achieva 1.5 Tesla scanner using a sparse imaging technique in which stimuli are presented during the silent period between successive scans. Participants listen to auditory stimuli under eight different conditions: clear speech, SSN or two competing talkers (each at 90%, 50% and 0% intelligibility), and silent rest. Pre- and post-training, hearing disability is assessed by the Speech-Spatial-Qualities-Questionnaire.

The study is on-going and behavioral results as well as results from fMRI will be presented.

8. Distraction of Eye-Hand Coordination varies with Working Memory Capacity

Domkin, Dmitry

et al.

University of Gävle, Faculty of Health and Occupational Studies, Department of Occupational and Public Health Sciences, Occupational health science. University of Gävle, Centre for Musculoskeletal Research.

University of Gävle, Faculty of Health and Occupational Studies, Department of Occupational and Public Health Sciences, Occupational health science. University of Gävle, Centre for Musculoskeletal Research.

The authors present a study of the relationship between individual variation in working memory capacity (WMC) and visually guided hand control in the face of visual distraction. WMC was assessed with the automated operation span task. Hand control was measured by requesting participants to track a visual target with a hand-held touch screen pen. Tracking error increased when nontarget visual objects (distractors) appeared, especially in individuals with low WMC. High-WMC individuals are less impaired by distractors than their low-WMC counterpart, because they resume target tracking more quickly after distractor onset. The results suggest that visual distractors cause a momentary interruption to tracking movements and that high WMC attenuates this interruption by facilitating visual search.

Visiting or viewing nature environments can have restorative psychological effects, while exposure to the built environment typically has less positive effects. A classic view is that this difference in restorative potential of nature and built environments depends on differences in the intrinsic characteristics of the stimuli. In addition, an evolutionary account is often assumed whereby restoration is believed to be a hardwired response to nature’s stimulus-features. Here, we propose the novel hypothesis that the restorative effects of a stimulus do not entirely depend on the stimulus-features per se, but also on the meaning that people assign to the stimulus. Participants conducted cognitively demanding tests prior to and after a brief pause. During the pause, the participants were exposed to an ambiguous sound consisting of pink noise with white noise interspersed. Participants in the “nature sound-source condition” were told that the sound originated from a nature scene with a waterfall; participants in the “industrial sound-source condition” were told that the sound originated from an industrial environment with machinery; and participants in the “control condition” were told nothing about the sound origin. Self-reported mental exhaustion showed that participants in the nature sound-source condition were more psychologically restored after the pause than participants in the industrial sound-source condition. One potential interpretation of the results is that restoration from nature experiences depends on learned, positive associations with nature; not only on hardwired responses shaped by evolution.

People tend to idealize eco-labeled products, but can eco-labeling have consequences for performance To address this question, 48 university students were asked to undertake a color discrimination task adjacent to a desktop lamp that was either labeled “environmentally friendly” or “conventional” (although they were identical). The light of the lamp labeled “environmentally friendly” was rated as more comfortable. Notably, task performance was also better when the lamp was labeled “environmentally friendly”. Individual differences in environmental concern, but not pro-environmental consumer behavior and social desirability indexes, were related to the magnitude of the eco-label effect on performance. Whilst some previous studies have shown similar placebo-like effects of eco-labels on subjective ratings, this is the first study to show an eco-label effect for artifacts in the built environment on performance, and the first study to relate this effect to environmental concern. Psychological mechanisms that may underpin the eco-label effects are discussed.

Performance on various cognitive tasks is impaired by task-irrelevant speech. The objective of this study was to manipulate the detrimental effects of task-irrelevant speech on a proofreading task, by increasing task engagement using an odd font (i.e. Haettenschweiler vs. Times). Texts were proofread in three different sound conditions (i.e. quiet, task-irrelevant speech and spectrally rotated speech). The participants searched for words (i.e. either content or function words) that were either misspelled or exchanged with contextually inappropriate words. Speech impaired detection of exchanged function words, but only when the text was written in Times, not when written in the odd font. Moreover, the participants missed fewer misspelled words in the speech condition, especially in Times, and they read more slowly in this sound condition. Taken together, these results indicate that proofreading behavior changes in the presence of task-irrelevant speech, to a more superficial/structural level of text processing (hence the improvement in detection of misspelled words), in comparison to the deeper/semantic level of text processing in the quiet condition (i.e., better detection of contextually inappropriate words). Greater task engagement (as indexed by the Haettenschweiler font), however, appears to protect the participant from the effect of sound on the ability to detect contextually inappropriate words.

14. Central load reduces peripheral processing

Halin, Niklas

et al.

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Environmental psychology. University of Gävle.

Marsh, John E.

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Environmental psychology. School of Psychology, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK.

Sörqvist, Patrik

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Environmental psychology.

Is there a trade-off between central (working memory) load and peripheral (perceptual) processing? To address this question, participants were requested to undertake an n-back task in one of two levels of central/cognitive load (i.e., 1-back or 2-back) in the presence of a to-be-ignored story presented via headphones. Participants were told to ignore the background story, but they were given a surprise memory test of what had been said in the background story, immediately after the n-back task was completed. Memory was poorer in the high central load (2-back) condition in comparison with the low central load (1-back) condition. Hence, when people compensate for higher central load, by increasing attentional engagement, peripheral processing is constrained. Moreover, participants with high working memory capacity (WMC)—with a superior ability for attentional engagement—remembered less of the background story, but only in the low central load condition. Taken together, peripheral processing—as indexed by incidental memory of background speech—is constrained when task engagement is high.

This article reports 2 experiments that examine techniques to shield against the potentially disruptive effects of task-irrelevant background speech on proofreading. The participants searched for errors in texts that were either normal (i.e., written in Times New Roman font) or altered (i.e., presented either in Haettenschweiler font or in Times New Roman but masked by visual noise) in 2 sound conditions: a silent condition and a condition with background speech. Proofreading for semantic/contextual errors was impaired by speech, but only when the text was normal. This effect of speech was completely abolished when the text was written in an altered font (Experiment 1) or when it was masked by visual noise (Experiment 2). There was no functional difference between the 2 ways to alter the text with regard to the way the manipulations influenced the effects of background speech on proofreading. The results indicate that increased task demands, which lead to greater focal-task engagement, may shield against the distracting effects of background speech on proofreading.

A shield against distraction2014In: Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, ISSN 2211-3681, E-ISSN 2211-369X, Vol. 3, no 1, p. 31-36Article in journal (Refereed)

Abstract [en]

In this paper, we apply the basic idea of a trade-off between the level of concentration and distractibility to test whether a manipulation of task difficulty can shield against distraction. Participants read, either in quiet or with a speech noise background, texts that were displayed either in an easy-to-read or a hard-to-read font. Background speech impaired prose recall, but only when the text was displayed in the easy-to-read font. Most importantly, recall was better in the background speech condition for hard-to-read than for easy-to-read texts. Moreover, individual differences in working memory capacity were related to the magnitude of disruption, but only in the easy-to-read condition. Making a task more difficult can sometimes facilitate selective attention in noisy work environments by promoting focal-task engagement.

Performance on visual-verbal tasks is generally impaired by task-irrelevant background speech, which can have consequences for individuals who works in noisy environments (e.g., schools or offices). This study examined the role increased task difficulty plays in shielding against the effects of background speech. This issue was addressed across 4 experiments whereby the level of task difficulty on visual-verbal tasks was manipulated (e.g., by changing the font of a text to one that is harder to read). Experiments 1 to 3 qualified the general finding: that background speech impairs performance on visual-verbal tasks (proofreading and prose memory), but only when task difficulty was low, not when it was high. Moreover, experiment 4 demonstrates that higher task difficulty on the focal task (n-back) also reduces recall on a surprise memory test on the content of a to-be-ignored background story. These results suggest that an increase in task difficulty, which promotes greater task engagement, can shield against the detrimental effects of background speech and also constrain the processing of complex semantic information present in background speech.

18. Averaging bias in environmental impact estimates

Holmgren, Mattias

et al.

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Environmental psychology.

Andersson, Hanna

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Industrial Development, IT and Land Management, Decision, Risk and Policy Analysis.

Sörqvist, Patrik

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Environmental psychology.

In this paper we argue that unsustainable behaviors often stem from a common averaging bias when people estimate the environmental impact of a set of environmentally friendly and less friendly objects or actions. In Experiment 1, we show that people believe that the total carbon footprint of a category of items (a community of buildings in this case) is lower, rather than higher, when environmentally friendly (“green” buildings) items are added to the category, a negative footprint illusion. Experiment 2 showed that the carbon footprint estimate assigned to a category with a mix of environmentally friendly and less friendly objects (“green” and conventional buildings) is the average of its subsets (the “green” buildings and the conventional buildings, respectively), an averaging bias. A similar averaging process may underpin estimates of the environmental impact of people's own actions, explaining why people believe that environmentally friendly actions can compensate for less friendly actions.

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building Engineering, Energy Systems and Sustainability Science, Environmental Science.

Kabanshi, Alan

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building Engineering, Energy Systems and Sustainability Science, Energy Systems and Building Technology.

Langeborg, Linda

University of Gävle, Faculty of Health and Occupational Studies, Department of Occupational Health Science and Psychology, Psychology.

Barthel, Stephan

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building Engineering, Energy Systems and Sustainability Science, Environmental Science.

Colding, Johan

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building Engineering, Energy Systems and Sustainability Science, Environmental Science. Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics, The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, Sweden.

Eriksson, Ola

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building Engineering, Energy Systems and Sustainability Science, Environmental Science.

Sörqvist, Patrik

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building Engineering, Energy Systems and Sustainability Science, Environmental Science.

People's beliefs in the actions necessary to reduce anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are important to public policy acceptability. The current paper addressed beliefs concerning how periods of small emission cuts contribute to the total CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, by asking participants to rate the atmospheric CO2 concentration for various time periods and emission rates. The participants thought that a time period with higher emission rates combined with a period of lower emission rates generates less atmospheric CO2 in total, compared to the period with high emission rates alone – demonstrating a negative footprint illusion (Study 1). The participants appeared to base their CO2 estimates on the average, rather than on the accumulated sum, of the two periods' emissions – i.e. an averaging bias (Study 2). Moreover, the effect was robust to the wordings of the problem presented to the participants (Study 3). Together, these studies suggest that the averaging bias makes people exaggerate the benefits of small emission cuts. The averaging bias could make people willing to accept policies that reduce emission rates although insufficiently to alleviate global warming.

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Environmental psychology.

Kabanshi, Alan

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Energy system.

Marsh, John E.

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Environmental psychology. School of Psychology, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, United Kingdom.

Sörqvist, Patrik

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Environmental psychology.

When ‘environmentally friendly’ items are added to a set of conventional items, people report that the total set will have a lower environmental impact even though the actual impact increases. One hypothesis is that this “negative footprint illusion” arises because people, who are susceptible to the illusion, lack necessary knowledge of the item’s actual environmental impact, perhaps coupled with a lack of mathematical skills. The study reported here addressed this hypothesis by recruiting participants (‘experts’) from a master’s program in energy systems, who thus have bachelor degrees in energy-related fields including academic training in mathematics. They were asked to estimate the number of trees needed to compensate for the environmental burden of two sets of buildings: One set of 150 buildings with conventional energy ratings and one set including the same 150 buildings but also 50 ‘green’ (energy-efficient) buildings. The experts reported that less trees were needed to compensate for the set with 150 conventional and 50 ‘green’ buildings compared to the set with only the 150 conventional buildings. This negative footprint illusion was as large in magnitude for the experts as it was for a group of novices without academic training in energy-related fields. We conclude that people are not immune to the negative footprint illusion even when they have the knowledge necessary to make accurate judgments.

Previous research has shown that merely calling an indoor environment environmentally certified will make people favor that environment over a conventional alternative. In this paper we explore whether this effect depends on participants deliberately comparing the two environments, and whether different reasons behind the certification influence the magnitude of the effect. In Experiment 1, participants in a between-subjects design assigned higher comfort ratings to an indoor environment that had been labeled "environmentally certified" in comparison with the exact same indoor environment that was unlabeled, suggesting that the effect arises even when participants do not compare the two environments when making their estimates. The results from Experiment 2 indicate that climate change mitigation (as the reason for the certification) is a slightly better trigger of the effect compared to climate change adaptation. The results suggest that studies on psychological effects of "green" buildings should experimentally control for the influence from participants' judgmental biases.

Studies have found a preference bias for “environmentally friendly” or “green” artifacts and buildings. For example, indoor environments are more favorably viewed when the building is labeled/certified “green”, in comparison with one that is not labeled/certified, even though the two environments are actually identical. The present study explored how physical properties of the indoor environment (high vs. low temperature) and labeling (“green” vs. “conventional”) interacts in their effect on environment perception. Participants performed a series of tasks in four indoor environments with different labels (low vs. high carbon footprint) and different temperatures (23°C vs. 28°C). Label and temperature were manipulated orthogonally. The participants’ environmental concern was also measured. The environmentally concerned participant assigned higher thermal acceptance and satisfaction scores to the environment labeled “low carbon footprint” (i.e., “green” certified) compared to the environment labeled “high carbon footprint” (i.e., not “green” certified), but only in the cooler thermal environment. Environmentally indifferent participants’ perception of the environment did not differ depending on label or room temperature. The results suggest that a “green” label positively influence the perception of the indoor environment for occupants, but only when the temperature is within the acceptable range as proposed in guidelines for “green” buildings.

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Environmental psychology. Linnaeus Centre HEAD, Swedish Institute for Disability Research, Linköping University and Department of Sports and Medicine, University of Dalarna, Sweden .

Hygge, Staffan

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Environmental psychology.

Kjellberg, Anders

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Environmental psychology.

Nöstl, Anatole

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Environmental psychology.

Keus van de Poll, Marijke

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Environmental psychology.

Ljung, Robert

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Environmental psychology.

24. Children’s recall of words spoken in their first and second language

Hurtig, Anders

et al.

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Environmental psychology. Linnaeus Centre HEAD, Swedish Institute for Disability Research, University of Linköping, Linköping, Sweden; Department of Education, Health and Social Studies, University of Dalarna, Falun, Sweden.

Keus van de Poll, Marijke

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Environmental psychology.

Pekkola, Elina

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Environmental psychology.

Hygge, Staffan

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Environmental psychology.

Ljung, Robert

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Environmental psychology.

Speech perception runs smoothly and automatically when there is silence in the background, but when the speech signal is degraded by background noise or by reverberation, effortful cognitive processing is needed to compensate for the signal distortion. Previous research has typically investigated the effects of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and reverberation time in isolation, whilst few have looked at their interaction. In this study, we probed how reverberation time and SNR influence recall of words presented in participants’ first- (L1) and second-language (L2). A total of 72 children (10 years old) participated in this study. The to-be-recalled wordlists were played back with two different reverberation times (0.3 and 1.2 sec) crossed with two different SNRs (+3 dBA and +12 dBA). Children recalled fewer words when the spoken words were presented in L2 in comparison with recall of spoken words presented in L1. Words that were presented with a high SNR (+12 dBA) improved recall compared to a low SNR (+3 dBA). Reverberation time interacted with SNR to the effect that at +12 dB the shorter reverberation time improved recall, but at +3 dB it impaired recall. The effects of the physical sound variables (SNR and reverberation time) did not interact with language.

The purpose of this experiment was to explore whether listening positions (close or distant location from the sound source) in the classroom, and classroom reverberation, influence students’ score on a test for second-language (L2) listening comprehension (i.e., comprehension of English in Swedish speaking participants). The listening comprehension test administered was part of a standardized national test of English used in the Swedish school system. A total of 125 high school pupils, 15 years old, participated. Listening position was manipulated within subjects, classroom reverberation between subjects. The results showed that L2 listening comprehension decreased as distance from the sound source increased. The effect of reverberation was qualified by the participants’ baseline L2 proficiency. A shorter reverberation was beneficial to participants with high L2 proficiency, while the opposite pattern was found among the participants with low L2 proficiency. The results indicate that listening comprehension scores—and hence students’ grade in English—may depend on students’ classroom listening position.

An experiment will be reported which assessed speech intelligibility and free recall of spoken words in Swedish (native tongue) and in English heard under different signal-to-noise (S/N) ratios (+3 and +12 dB), and with/without the spoken words being repeated back orally directly after presentation (shadowing). All participants encountered all experimental conditions. Twelve wordlists with 12 words each were generated in English as well as in Swedish. The words were chosen according to their ranks in category norms for the two languages, and no category was the same for the two languages. Blocks of counter balanced presentation orders, S/N-ratios and shadowing/no shadowing were generated. After each wordlist the participants wrote down the words they could recall. Pre-experimental measures of working memory capacity were taken. The basic hypotheses for the recall of the words were that working memory would be overloaded when the S/N-ratio was low, there was no shadowing and when the language was English. A low score on working memory capacity was expected to further enhance these effects. While writing this abstract data collection is still in progress but results will be presented at the conference.

University of Gävle, Faculty of Health and Occupational Studies, Department of Occupational and Public Health Sciences, Occupational health science. University of Gävle, Centre for Musculoskeletal Research.

Björkeholm, Patrik

Uppsala University, Department of Psychology.

Marsh, John E.

University of Central Lancashire, School of Psychology.

Odelius, Johan

Luleå University of Technology, Department of Civil, Environmental, and Natural Resources Engineering.

Sörqvist, Patrik

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Environmental psychology.

BACKGROUND: Background speech is one of the most disturbing noise sources at shared workplaces in terms of both annoyance and performance-related disruption. Therefore, it is important to identify techniques that can efficiently protect performance against distraction. It is also important that the techniques are perceived as satisfactory and are subjectively evaluated as effective in their capacity to reduce distraction.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of the current study was to compare three methods of attenuating distraction from background speech: masking a background voice with nature sound through headphones, masking a background voice with other voices through headphones and merely wearing headphones (without masking) as a way to attenuate the background sound. Quiet was deployed as a baseline condition.

METHODS: Thirty students participated in an experiment employing a repeated measures design.

RESULTS: Performance (serial short-term memory) was impaired by background speech (1 voice), but this impairment was attenuated when the speech was masked – and in particular when it was masked by nature sound. Furthermore, perceived workload was lowest in the quiet condition and significantly higher in all other sound conditions. Notably, the headphones tested as a sound-attenuating device (i.e. without masking) did not protect against the effects of background speech on performance and subjective work load.

CONCLUSIONS: Nature sound was the only masking condition that worked as a protector of performance, at least in the context of the serial recall task. However, despite the attenuation of distraction by nature sound, perceived workload was still high – suggesting that it is difficult to find a masker that is both effective and perceived as satisfactory.

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Environmental psychology.

Marsh, John

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Environmental psychology. School of Psychology, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK.

Differences in the impact of irrelevant sound on recall performance in children (aged 7-9 years old; N = 89) compared to adults (aged 18-22 years old; N = 89) were examined. Tasks that required serial rehearsal (serial and probed-order recall tasks) were contrasted with one that did not (the missing-item task) in the presence of irrelevant sound that was either steady-state (a repeated speech token), changing-state (two alternating speech tokens) and, for the first time with a child sample, could also contain a deviant token (a male-voice token embedded in a sequence otherwise spoken in a female voice). Participants either completed tasks in which the to-be-remembered list-length was adjusted to individual digit span or was fixed at one item greater than the average span we observed for the age-group. The disruptive effects of irrelevant sound did not vary across the two methods of determining list-length. We found that tasks encouraging serial rehearsal were especially affected by changing-state sequences for both age-groups (i.e., the changing-state effect) and there were no group differences in relation to this effect. In contrast, disruption by a deviant sound—generally assumed to be the result of attentional diversion—was evident among children in all three tasks while adults were less susceptible to this effect. This pattern of results suggests that developmental differences in distraction are due to differences in attentional control rather than serial rehearsal efficiency.

Irrelevant background speech impairs cognitive capabilities such as writing. Laboratory studies wherein participants were tested alone in sound attenuated rooms, showed that ordinary speech, even with relatively low intelligibility (Keus van de Poll, Ljung, Odelius, Sörqvist, 2014), is more distracting than meaningless speech (Sörqvist, Nöstl, & Halin, 2012). Yet, so far research has paid little attention to the manifestation of these effects in classroom environments. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of irrelevant background speech on writing in a realistic classroom setting. The hypothesis was that irrelevant background speech would have distracting effects on text production, especially on writing fluency and typing errors. In an experimental within-subjects design, college students (in groups of 10-12 participants), sitting in a classroom, were asked to write short essays (5 minutes per essay) in the software program scriptlog. One essay was written in silence and one in the presence of background speech. As expected, background speech had a (slight) effect, although more participants are needed to increase the experimental power. Comparisons with previous studies on the effects of speech on writing are made and future directions are discussed.

32. The effect of heat stress on writing performance in a classroom

Kabanshi, Alan

et al.

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Energy system.

Keus van de Poll, Marijke

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Environmental psychology.

Wigö, Hans

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Energy system.

Ljung, Robert

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Environmental psychology.

Studies have shown that heat stress impairs performance. This depends on the mental loading capacity of the task performed and the exposure time. This is a study of a common task in schools and offices: writing task. It also analyses the occupants’ perceived thermal comfort. The experiment was done in two heat conditions: 20 and 25 centigrade. The between participant design was used. ScriptLog was used to perform the writing task, while questionnaires and a Sudoku task were paper based tasks. The results show that the predicted mean vote (PMV) between conditions was significant (p<0.02) and participants perceived the 20 º C condition to be draughty. They however preferred a little more air movements in both conditions. Writing performance only showed a significant difference (p = 0.03) on deleted characters but the other variables considered did not show any significant differences but showed a strong tendency that with a long exposure time it would eventually be impaired. This shows that writing despite being a complex task is not a high mental loading task and is not quickly impaired by heat stress.

33. The influence of heat, air jet cooling and noise on performance in classrooms

Kabanshi, Alan

et al.

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Energy system. Center for the Built Environment, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley CA, USA.

Wigö, Hans

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Energy system.

Keus van de Poll, Marijke

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Environmental psychology.

Ljung, Robert

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Environmental psychology.

Sörqvist, Patrik

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Environmental psychology.

The quality of indoor environments influences satisfaction, health, and work performance of the occupants. Additional understanding of the theoretical and practical value of individual indoor parameters in relation to health and performance aids indoor climate designers to obtain desired outcomes. This also results in expenditure savings and increased revenue: health care and improved productivity. Here, we report two experiments that investigated how heat, cooling strategy and background noise influence performance in a full-scale classroom mockup setting. The results show that heat and background noise are detrimental to logic-based tasks and to writing, whilst cooling manipulations can protect performance. Implications for indoor environment design are discussed.

Classrooms normally host a large number of people and the heat generated provides a challenge cool. Traditional cooling methods by increased low temperature supply airflow rate or use of heat sinks are expensive and mostly inefficient. The strategy of controlled air movements in the occupied zone may prove cheaper and desirable. This research investigates recirculation of room air to provide intermittent velocity cooling in classrooms. The objective of this experiment was to assess how occupants perceive the recirculated intermittent air velocity conditions in classrooms and when the variations should be introduced in the room for optimal results. This was done with a between participant design, accessing how they perceived indoor air quality (IAQ) and the thermal comfort in two velocity conditions: constant low air velocity condition (< 0.15 m/s) and intermittent air velocity condition (0.4 m/s). As shown here; intermittent air velocity has a positive effect on the perceived thermal comfort (p < 0.04) and perception of air quality: less draughty and improved humid perception. The participants perceived the conditions with intermittent velocity to give comfortable feelings and better air quality. The variations also showed better performance if they were provided at the start of occupancy as opposed to during or after a temperature build up. This strategy can be used in environments where it is rather uneconomical to provide cooling like spaces hosting a group of people: movie theatres, auditoriums, classrooms and perhaps in restaurants.

35. Experimental evaluation of an intermittent air supply system – Part 2: Occupant perception of thermal climate

Kabanshi, Alan

et al.

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Energy system.

Wigö, Hans

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Energy system.

Ljung, Robert

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Environmental psychology.

Sörqvist, Patrik

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Environmental psychology.

A newly proposed intermittent air jet strategy (IAJS) provides satisfactory indoor climate while promising a substantial energy saving potential, as shown in technical (objective) measurements. The strategy creates non-uniform airflow and non-isothermal conditions critical for sedentary operations at elevated temperatures. The current study explored human perception of thermal environment under an IAJS. Assessment of thermal sensation, thermal comfort, and thermal acceptability were collected based on responses from 36 participants. Participants sat in a classroom setup and performed sedentary work. Their clothing had an insulation of 0.51 clo (T-shirt on upper body). Participants were exposed to homogeneous (v < 0.15 m/s) and nonhomogeneous (0.4 m/s < v < 0.8 m/s) velocity conditions across three temperature conditions: 22.5 °C, 25.5 °C and 28.5 °C. The participants found air speeds to be undesirable at lower temperatures, but reported an improved thermal sensation, comfort and acceptability at higher temperatures. As shown here, IAJS generated neutral operable conditions between 24.8 °C and 27.8 °C, within an air speed range of 0.4 m/s to 0.8 m/s. Additionally, air movements induced thermal alliethesia resulting in improved comfort and acceptance of the thermal climate even at lower air speeds in warm temperature conditions. Hence, the current study supports the energy saving potential with IAJS in view of the human perception of the indoor environment.

Environments with high temperatures and under steady conditions are perceived poor. The introduction of airflow variations in such environments improves the perception. However the risk of draught is high and to avoid this, variations in high velocity supply is used. This method is far more energy efficient than cooling the entire space as only the occupants are cooled. This paper discusses two studies on occupant cooling conducted at the University of Gävle. The experiments were performed in a full scale mockup classroom and a total of 85 students participated. In Study 1, students sat in a classroom for about 60 minutes in one of two heat conditions: 20 and 25 º C. In Study 2, the indoor parameters of 25 º C were maintained but airflow variation in the sitting zone was manipulated. In both studies, the participants performed various tasks and answered questionnaires on their perception of the indoor climate. As shown here, higher room temperature deteriorates human perception of the indoor climate in classrooms, and the use of intermittent air jet cooling improves the perception of indoor climate just like cooling by reducing the room air temperature. This study contributes to further knowledge of how convective cooling can be used as a method of cooling in school environments so as to improve on building energy use.

The study reported herein builds on occupant response to an intermittent air jet strategy (IAJS), which creates periodic airflow and non-isothermal conditions in the occupied zone. Previous research has highlighted the benefits of IAJS on thermal climate and supports energy saving potential in view of human thermal perception of the indoor environment. In this study, the goal was to explore occupant acceptability of air movements and perceived indoor air quality, and to determine a way of assessing acceptable air movement conditions under IAJS. Thirty-six participants were exposed to twelve conditions: three room air temperatures (nominal: 22.5, 25.5 and 28.5 oC), each with varied air speeds (nominal: <0.15 m/s under mixing ventilation (MV), and 0.4, 0.6 and 0.8 m/s under IAJS) measured at the breathing height (1.1 m). The results show that participants preferred low air movements at lower temperatures and high air movements at higher temperatures. A model to predict percentage satisfied with intermittent air movements was developed, and predicts that about 87% of the occupants within a thermal sensation range of slightly cool (-0.5) to slightly warm (+0.5), in compliance with ASHRAE standard 55, will find intermittent air movements acceptable between 23.7 oC and 29.1 oC within a velocity range of 0.4 – 0.8 m/s. IAJS also improved participants’ perception of air quality in conditions deemed poor under MV. The findings support the potential of IAJS as a primary ventilation system in high occupant spaces such as classrooms.

Broadband noise is often used as a masking sound to combat the negative consequences of background speech on performance in open-plan offices. As office workers generally dislike broadband noise, it is important to find alternatives that are more appreciated while being at least not less effective. The purpose of experiment 1 was to compare broadband noise with two alternatives—multiple voices and water waves—in the context of a serial short-term memory task. A single voice impaired memory in comparison with silence, but when the single voice was masked with multiple voices, performance was on level with silence. Experiment 2 explored the benefits of multiple-voice masking in more detail (by comparing one voice, three voices, fivevoices, and seven voices) in the context of word processed writing (arguably a more office-relevant task). Performance (i.e., writing fluency) increased linearly from worst performance in the one-voice condition to best performance in the seven-voice condition. Psychological mechanisms underpinning these effects are discussed.

Research has shown impairing effects of irrelevant speech on cognitive capabilities as, for example, reading and listening comprehension. Yet, so far research has paid little attention to how these distracters can influence text production. The aim of this study is to investigate how speech intelligibility in terms of different Speech Transmission Index (STI) values influence writing performance. The expectation is that background sound with higher STI values (i.e., when it is easier to hear what is said in the speech signal) will be more detrimental to the writing process. Moreover, the expectation is that persons with high working memory capacity (WMC) will be less distracted than persons with low WMC. In an experimental within-subjects design college students (N ~ 48) are asked to write short essays (5 minutes per essay) in the software program ScriptLog in 5 different STI conditions. Across the conditions, irrelevant background speech masked by white noise is manipulated in terms of different STI values. The essays are based on different pictures presented on a computer screen. At the beginning the participants are asked to do a working memory task (size-comparison span). The results will be presented at the conference. This study contributes to further knowledge of how different acoustical conditions influence cognitive language production processes, which is important in schools and office environments.

40. Disruption of writing by background speech

Keus van de Poll, Marijke

et al.

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Environmental psychology.

Ljung, Robert

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Environmental psychology.

Odelius, Johan

Luleå Tekniska Universitet.

Sörqvist, Patrik

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Environmental psychology. Linköpings universitet.

Speech transmission index (STI) is an objective measure of the acoustic properties of office environments and is used to specify norms for acceptable acoustic work conditions. Yet, the tasks used to evaluate the effects of varying STIs on work performance have often been focusing on memory (as memory of visually presented words) and reading tasks and may not give a complete viewof the severity even of low STI values (i.e., when speech intelligibility is low). Against this background, we used a more typical office-work task in the present study. The participants were asked to write short essays (5 min per essay) in 5 different STI conditions (0.08; 0.23; 0.34; 0.50; and 0.71). Writingfluency dropped drastically and the number of pauses longer than 5 s increased at STI values above 0.23. This study shows that realistic work-related performance drops even at low STI values and has implications for how to evaluate acoustic conditions in school and office environments.

It has been shown, with tasks specifically designed for well-controlled laboratory research, that task-irrelevant speech is more distracting when it is presented to the right ear (as right-ear presentation has privileged access to the left hemisphere that plays a dominant role in language processing). This is called the right-ear disadvantage. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the right-ear disadvantage generalizes to more applied, less well-controlled, tasks. Students were asked to write short stories while they were hearing task-irrelevant sound, either normal or spectrally-rotated speech, which they were to ignore. The sound was either presented to the right or to the left ear. The participants produced less written text when they were exposed to normal speech in comparison with rotated speech. However, this difference was just as large when the sound was presented to the right as to the left ear. In all, the semanticity of speech seems to disrupt output writing processes, but there was no evidence of a right-ear disadvantage with this task, probably because writing is not an experimentally controlled task. This study shows that the applied consequences of right-ear disadvantage are limited.

Task interruptions and background speech, both part of the everyday situation in office environments, impair cognitive performance. The current experiments explored the combined effects of background speech and task interruptions on word processed writing-arguably, a task representative of office work. Participants wrote stories, in silence or in the presence of background speech (monologues, halfalogues and dialogues), and were occasionally interrupted by a secondary task. Writing speed was comparably low during the immediate period after the interruption (Experiments 1 and 2); it took 10-15s to regain full writing speed. Background speech had only a small effect on performance (Experiment 1), but a dialogue was more disruptive than a halfalogue (Experiment 2). Background speech did not add to the cost caused by task interruptions. However, subjective measures suggested that speech, just as interruptions, contributed to perceived workload. The findings are discussed in view of attentional capture and interference-by-process mechanisms.

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Environmental psychology.

Marsh, John E.

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Environmental psychology. School of Psychology, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, Lancashire UK .

This paper reexamines the effects of background speech on counting. Previous studies have shown that background sound disrupts counting in comparison with silence, but the magnitude of disruption is no larger for spoken numbers compared with that for non-number speech (there is no effect of the meaning of background speech). The typical task used previously has been to count the number of sequentially presented visual events. We replicated the general finding in Experiment 1—that there is no effect of the meaning of background speech—in the context of the classic sequence counting task. In Experiment 2, the task was changed by having to-be-counted dots presented simultaneously and randomly across the visual field. Here, an effect attributable to the meaning of background speech emerged. Background speech that is similar in meaning to the focal task process contributes to the magnitude of disruption, but apparently only when spatial memory processes are a task prerequisite.

Irrelevant speech in classrooms and road traffic noise adjacent to schools have a substantial impact on children's ability to learn. Comparing the effects of different noise sources on learning may help construct guidelines for noise abatement programs. Experimental studies are important to establish dose-response relationships and to expand our knowledge beyond correlation studies. This experiment examined effects of road traffic noise and irrelevant speech on children's reading speed, reading comprehension, basic mathematics, and mathematical reasoning. A total of 187 pupils (89 girls and 98 boys), 12-13 years old, were tested in their ordinary classrooms. Road traffic noise was found to impair reading speed (P < 0.01) and basic mathematics (P < 0.05). No effect was found on reading comprehension or on mathematical reasoning. Irrelevant speech did not disrupt performance on any task. These findings are related to previous research on noise in schools and the implications for noise abatement guidelines are discussed.

This paper reports two experiments on the effects of degraded speech signals on memory for spoken lectures. Experiment 1 showed that broadband noise impairs university students’ memory for a spoken lecture, even though the participants heard what was said. Experiment 2 showed that reverberation has detrimental effects to school adolescents’ memory for spoken lectures, similar to broadband noise. The results suggest that poor listening conditions (resulting from background noise and/or long reverberation time) impair memory and learning, even if the conditions allow the listeners to hear what is said. Since the goal for students and pupils attending to lectures is to remember the lecture rather than just hearing what is said, the results presented here indicate that standards for acceptable signal-to-noise ratios and reverberation times in buildings designed for learning should consider the distinction between speech intelligibility and memory. Standards should be based on memory criteria instead of intelligibility criteria.

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Environmental psychology. School of Psychology, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK.

Crawford, Jessica

School of Psychology, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, Lancashire, UK.

Pilgrim, Lea

School of Psychology, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, Lancashire, UK.

It is widely held that single-word lexical access is a competitive process, a view based largely on the observation that naming a picture is slowed in the presence of a distractor-word. However, problematic for this view is that a low-frequency distractor-word slows the naming of a picture more than does a high-frequency word. This supports an alternative, response-exclusion, account in which a distractor-word interferes because it must be excluded from an articulatory output buffer before the right word can be articulated (the picture name): A high, compared to low, frequency word accesses the buffer more quickly and, as such, can also be excluded more quickly. Here we studied the respective roles of competition and response-exclusion for the first time in the context of semantic verbal fluency, a setting requiring the accessing of, and production of, multiple words from long-term memory in response to a single semantic cue. We show that disruption to semantic fluency by a sequence of to-be-ignored spoken distractors is also greater when those distractors are low in frequency, thereby extending the explanatory compass of the response-exclusion account to a multiple-word production setting and casting further doubt on the lexical-selection-by-competition view. The results can be understood as reflecting the contribution of speech output processes to semantic fluency.

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Environmental psychology. School of Psychology, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK.

Hughes, Robert W.

Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London, United Kingdom.

Sörqvist, Patrik

University of Gävle, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, Environmental psychology.

Beaman, Charles P.

Centre for Cognition Research, School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, United Kingdom.

Two experiments examined the extent to which erroneous recall blocks veridical recall using, as a vehicle for study, the disruptive impact of distractors that are semantically similar to a list of words presented for free recall. Instructing participants to avoid erroneous recall of to-be-ignored spoken distractors attenuated their recall but this did not influence the disruptive effect of those distractors on veridical recall (Experiment 1). Using an externalized output-editing procedure-whereby participants recalled all items that came to mind and identified those that were erroneous-the usual between-sequences semantic similarity effect on erroneous and veridical recall was replicated but the relationship between the rate of erroneous and veridical recall was weak (Experiment 2). The results suggest that forgetting is not due to veridical recall being blocked by similar events.